tracker1

Beyond that are the payment systems and tracking that they have... Point of Sale hardware/software has always been tracking, especially if you regularly use credit/debit cards... your name and Zip+4 is pretty damned accurate for correlated data (aside from jr/sr scenarios, worse).

They share, collaborate and collude and it all strips away your rights. Similar for so many large merchants and the alternative is to pay 10-20% more (or more) for smaller shops. That said, Amazon has gotten so bad with opportunistic pricing that they're sometimes more expensive than the alternatives anyway.

I have an LG monitor... and while running Linux, will definitely not be buying another... this is ridiculous. I've been weary of "smart" TVs for a long while, WTF do you need a microphone on a TV?!?

If I buy a TV and it doesn't work without connecting to the internet, I'm simply going to return it. Changing this after the fact should mean a class action lawsuit. It's ridiculous, and MS should absolutely restrict this kind of crap... They (Microsoft) auto-load the software for Logitec mice and cameras as well, but at least they (Logitech) aren't injecting ad/spyware.

I've been doing similar for many scripts within project workflows... I've started calling the directory in question ./run/ by convention, so I type run/scriptname to run stuff... I've got bash (extnsionless) and powershell (ps1) scripts in place on my work project).

I'll also lean into docker+compose usage for any background services, and even development in order to reduce the running footprint switching projects.

Yeah... I mean, you don't have to implement everything to be useful as a message platform though... most of the extension usage are kludges anyway. Also, can probably simply use UTF8 and UTC/GMT by convention where the client displays local date/time, etc. Can also revamp a lot of aspects by convention in-network as part of the server/client structures.

That said, I'd still say it's useful, you just need to at least have user/system authentication as plain text over nntp(s|es) to significantly reduce spam.

yeah, because downloading and copy/pasting file contents are so very hard to do.

I call out specifically in my agent/claude file that I want and prefer simpler solutions over complex enterprise pattern usage and overuse of abstractions. It tends to help a bit, but often I have to give feedback in my review step.

My typical workflow when AI assisted is what I call human gatekeeping... I'll plan out next steps with the agent, updating a TODO.md file with what needs to be done, then a fresh context to implement the next step(s), and review the code before committing to git. I may iterate/stash or even reset a few times before it's "good enough"... it is rarely close to what I would do myself, but often as good as what I've gotten from other developers IRL on projects.

This includes updating the documentation area(s) of a project as well as testing. I also tend to lean on ./run/* for scripts that will run/test various portions of the project... getting the agent to use these is sometimes harder than it should be, as I want it to specifically exercise a lot of things through the process... there are also times where it will try to change a valid test that's failing instead of fixing the code. That's the most irritating part. Some models are annoying, some feel like pure magic at times.

Ask your LLM in session to create a summary.md file... you can carry that into other sessions with different/new contexts.

I usually just ask the agent to create a summary document in markdown format... I'll sometimes play out what I want to do on my phone in conversational modes, then take that output and start with it against a coding tool to continue/start actual work on things.

I tend to spend a lot more time planning than what it takes to execute/build what I'm after.. then more time reviewing again than the produce step(s) and iterate.

For that matter, I'll track what I'm wanting and what has been done via TODO.md file in project(s).

I'm not sure I would ever use/trust a service like this myself. I barely trust the AI providers as it is.

Could be useful to pre-populate and bootstrap a fresh personal use server/service...

I would love to see a return to more Usenet usage, as well as more semi-private BBS style networks transported over NNTP instead of FTN/Binkley protocols... These days most BBS systems are mostly local sysops and maybe a couple other sysops as users. I do think there's room for some modernization, but even then, I'd love to see a comeback.

Especially as the powers that be are progressing towards forcing ID verification on common social media sites... not that I have anything to hide, and I at least have #1A rights still, but so many around the world simply don't.

So be it, they can send me back.

True enough... but even then, you can download and review the script before running. Usually it just detects your OS/Distro and then downloads and runs the appropriate installer. You can also do this by hand.

For that matter, there's always a risk of downloading/installing anything from anywhere. There have been successful compromises of many application supply chains at this point in official release paths. You will accept some risk regardless of your approach.

I make it a rule never to give confidential information to an incoming call. I had a primary doctor whose office would send notification calls immediately asking for part of my social security number, I always hung up.... I figured out it was for the doctor later, and commented that it was ridiculous and I wouldn't ever receive any such notifications.

Just that simple practice has kept me reasonably safe, even from an AI scam once.

I'm mixed... if they really thought there was evidence on the phone, they should have seized the phone and acquired a warrant IMO to compel the valid, non-destructive PIN be given over.

As I mentioned earlier, this is part of why my own plans for international travel are to only go with a notebook/sheet with contact numbers and buy throwaway devices on the other side. I don't think I'd travel internationally with a phone or laptop at this point, and that's kind of been my thoughts for a while. Especially given the direction that many countries, not just the US have taken. For that matter, I don't think I'd ever even risk travelling to the UK or China at this point. Not that I like the surveillance state here in the US, at least I still have some rights preserved.

And this is why part of my plans for any international travel are to simply have a physical notebook with phone numbers to trusted friends/family and to buy throwaway devices on the other side (phone and chromebook or similar).

TBF, similar mindset if I ever attend defcon, etc. as well.

I'm more fond of just number+label files and a simple log as deployed to prevent re-run scenarios... Grate/Roundhouse does that for me... I don't use all the features, just separate each sproc/view and the up directory of migrations. This is checked into source control and gets deployed with the services themselves.

yeah, 1-2 across an index is fine... but I've seen live websites with very normalized structures where it took no less than 30 joins to get a flat view of a single resource. I could do the same with about 4 secondary queries (each with several joins), but I was trying to map a mental model of where all the data lived as a single view, so I could extract flat records for a search database.

There was absolutely zero advantage in how the data was structured in that case (auto classifieds website).

That's not to say that database normalization and modest level of joins is always bad... it's just something that can go too far, and holds things back even more in certain environments. FWIW, I started bundling child data in XML before JSON was a thing in highly controlled environments where any schema change was very difficult and required approvals through several groups in a large banking org.

That JSON is fairly well supported today only makes this an easier and better option IMO. Again, sometimes, but enough times to make note of.

I appreciate the pedantry, but in this case it's pretty immaterial to what specifically it refers to, and yeah, I'm pretty boring like that.

I made me smile.

I used to use a shell replacement in the Win2K era that I could do very similar.. I don't even recall what it was called, but you could completely customize pretty much everything. On win2k in particular (vs 9x/me) you could use transparency with the images in the UI/UX. It was pretty nice at the time... When Win7 came out, I liked the taskbar/menu there more and just went stock.

That's one that really gets me... if I'm buying a classic work or reprint, I'd really like a decent copy that can be handed down generationally... no such thing gets published today. I can understand a technical manual or programming book being printed in a lesser quality, even some education materials as they're likely to only be read through maybe once and maybe sparsely used for reference.

I can even understand the cheaper novel prints... but there should be decent hard back/cover copies that are much higher quality than what we see today. There's really zero excuse for it. Other than general enshitification we see everywhere.

I think if a work is out of publication/availability for over a decade, then copyright should maybe be forfeit altogether. Especially, if that would include digital copies, that has pretty much zero production cost.

Reminds me a bit more of Amiga... that said, I just don't like the "handle" on the windows, and the launcher is a bit odd imo.

Nifty to see... I always liked BeOS/Haiku from a tech perspective, but really don't care nearly as much for the UX or ergonomics... I really like a lot of the Windows 10 start menu and taskbar, but I do hate the MS search results/ads,etc so I switched to Linux for non-work and mostly Cosmic since later alphas.

Which doubly sucks in terms of assigning a DNS name to an IP/PC... and/or opening the assignment to less restricted access... feels just problematic to me.

Again, I don't know any of IPv6 enough to use it really right or wrong.

In retrospect, I think IBM would have been much better off if it had done two things differently... Made the deal with MS such that any external sales had a minimal price with a kickback to IBM, and that IBM would license its BIOS directly to third party MFGs.

If they'd have done that, much like MS, they'd have a piece of every PC sale, not just their own hardware.

That said, I don't think IBM culture could ever have that level of foresight or for that matter hold back the greed to try to own the whole pie. Just watching what became of OS/2. By the time NT4 came out, it was pretty much over... NT4 was leaps and bounds nicer to work with than OS/2 had been, and the software much more plentiful.

Not that MS was much better in terms of monopolistic tendencies, they managed to leverage their position both better, and in many ways have better overall offerings. Then again, MS today is a poor shadow itself of what it could have been had they not tried to start leveraging their own desktop customers for pennies on the dollar. Linux will erode their market share over time, and frankly, I'm surprised that MS doesn't have an AppImage/Flatpak version of MS Office for Linux that they license. They still have relatively nice tools, and though their online versions mostly work, it's not nearly as good and a lot of the integrations are still clunky.

MS-Word will replace " - " inside a paragraph with an em dash, fwiw. I don't know for sure about other word processors, I don't use them much tbf.

I just know that MS-Word will replace a hyphen with an em dash in practical use, which is a big part of why I didn't really pick it out as an AI thing in general. Though AI, in particular Chat GPT, does tend to use a lot of them.

I'm largely with you... I would think they'd take the IPv4 block and have a direct/virtual block that just extends it to more addresses... so it could be an IPv4 NAT or IPv6 direct.

like 1.1.1.1/192.168.45.4 ... for a router that understands IPv6, that's the direct route to the sub-network, otherwise it will have to use IPv4, and the subnet route is treated as NAT and otherwise isolated.

To me, that would make more sense... then internal IPv6 might be practically limited to 10. and 102.168. in the nearer term, but adoption would be MUCH simpler in practice, and distribution would mostly already be established, however unfairly, but can then be broken into single addresses and vNext adoption could be that much quicker as a result of piggybacking.

One thing I don't appreciate... Is the nature of NAT protected my internal/home network before... now, I have to actually configure firewall settings etc. to protect IPv6 issued addresses internally.

I know you can just block inbound non-established connections, but it feels like an extra step and complexity. Not to mention, that I really don't understand how IPs are supposed to be provisioned to devices on IPv6. Is there like a 50-100 page book you can recommend "for dummies" on IPv6, that hopefully contains at least a tiny amount of how to configure a common router and/or linux host.

I know that on my hosted server, I never bothered to set it up, because I didn't know how to properly configure or sub-net it. I know it's skill issue, but really feels significantly more complicated and even harder to understand than NAT even.

Not to mention, at home, most of the ads I do see (PiHole) are IPv6 addresses.

I got a "home" Verizon box, and the first thing I did was change the DNS setting... 1.1.1.1 wasn't working, and I wanted to change it back to default. Verizon's tech support are idiots... they literally wouldn't give me the default DNS IP because they were concerned about security.

Google's DNS worked fine, but Cloudflare's didn't. No idea if they ever fixed it... I'm using it as a backup for my main connection, eventually I'll setup autofailover on my router (OpnSense). For now, I just swap the cables.

LOL, they should have just used a 10.x space instead if they wanted slightly simpler numbers.

On the shotgun, or adjacent, I do tend to prefer ammo classes for my nets... 10.22.x.y, where x may be 1, 38, 45, etc. Allows for site to site vpn with friends/family a bit easier to remember.